Kravchenko, Vasyl

Kravchenko, Vasyl [Кравченко, Василь; Kravčenko, Vasyl'], b 8 May 1862 in Berdiansk, Tavriia gubernia, d 20 March 1945 in Rostov-na-Donu, RSFSR. Ethnographer and writer. He was one of the founders of the Volhynia Research Society and the director of its ethnographic section. By the end of the 19th century he had amassed a considerable collection of ethnographic materials, part of which was published by Borys Hrinchenko in his Etnograficheskie materialy sobrannye v Chernigovskoi i sosednikh s nei guberniiakh (Ethnographic Materials Collected in Chernihiv and Neighboring Gubernias, 3 vols, 1895–9). Kravchenko directed the ethnographic department of the Volhynian State Museum in Zhytomyr from 1920 to 1932 (now the Zhytomyr Regional Studies Museum), taught various courses there in 1922–4, and founded an ethnographic club (40 members) which published 13 issues of the handwritten journal Etnohraf. In 1932 Soviet authorities had him fired from his job and transferred to Dnipropetrovsk. His house and private archives and library were confiscated. Later he was exiled to the RSFSR. His primary works are Etnohrafichni materiialy zibrani Kravchenkom Vasyl'om (Ethnographic Materials Collected by Vasyl Kravchenko, 1911–20) and the story collection Budenne zhyttia (Everyday Life, 1902).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]